Dust storm magnitude startles even long-time residents

Lubbock has seen its share of dust storms over the years, but the gusty wall of dirt that blew into the city about 5:30 p.m. Monday was apparently beyond anything that had been seen here for decades.

"My wife and I have lived in Lubbock for 49 years and in West Texas for 52 years, and I have never seen a dust storm like this," City Councilman Paul Beane said. "I have seen pictures from the Dust Bowl Days in the 1930s, but I never thought I would see anything like this."

Beane said he was amazed to see the storm roll in as it did.

"It looked like the end of the world." Beane said.

National Weather Service forecaster Matt Ziebell said employees at NWS had pulled out some pictures from the Dust Bowl era and compared them with some of the photographs taken Monday by local people.

"They were dead ringers to some of them," he said.

The weather service heard reports coming about the storm about an hour before it arrived in Lubbock, but meteorologists didn't expect anything as intense as what arrived, Ziebell said.

The dust storm had started in the far southwest Texas panhandle along the leading edge of a cold front moving south toward Lubbock at about 55 mph. he said.

The dusty gales hit the north side of the city about 5:30 p.m. and took about 30 minutes to blow through Lubbock, Ziebell said. It took about an hour after that for all the dirt to settle.

In the height of the dust storm, visibility ranged from a quarter-mile to near-zero for 40 minutes at Lubbock Preston Smith International Airport, he said.

Like a dusty leviathan, the storm stretched all the way to eastern New Mexico, and it continued its southward trek long after it left Lubbock. Shortly after 7:30 p.m. Monday, it was blowing its way through the Permian Basin, Ziebell said.

The cold front following the dust storm dropped temperatures from almost 90 degrees at the airport into the lower 60s, he said.

NWS meteorologist Shawn Ellis said winds were gusting as high as 60 to 65 miles per hour in Lubbock, he said. The highest gust recorded in the region was 71 mph in Friona, he said.

Beane said he was trying to get in the front door of his house with his golf bag at the point when the blowing dirt first reached his street.

"I shut the door and turned around, and the sky went red. I beat it by about four seconds," he said.

Burle Pettit, Avalanche-Journal editor emeritus, said he couldn't see his neighbor's house across the street from his front porch and couldn't see a car 10 feet in front of him except for the tail lights.

"I've been here 51 years, and I have never seen it like this," he said,

Pettit was planning to go to a fast food restaurant to get food for his wife and himself before the storm hit. He went ahead with the errand, but he humorously questioned his judgment about it later.

"I must have been really hungry to do that. A lesser person would have come back in and told my wife to open up a can of something," he said.

Making his way through the hazy dust, Pettit drove past the restaurant and had to turn back. When he arrived, he saw the glass in the front door broken and assumed it must have happened when the door flew against something after it was opened.

While he was there, the manager of the fast food restaurant told everyone inside to move to the center of the building, and she locked the door, he said.

Pettit told the manager he wanted to go home and be with his wife, and she told him at first he couldn't leave. "Finally she unlocked the door and said, 'If you leave, it is at your own peril,'" Pettit said.

"I told her, 'Lady, I'm 77 years old. Everything I do is at my own peril,'" he said.

Joel Castro, who is relatively new to Lubbock, got a crash course in dust storms he will remember for a long time.

He is a Lubbock Independent School District associate superintendent and was in a meeting at Estacado High School, near the intersection of North Loop 289 and Martin Luther King Boulevard, when the dirt blew in.

"Principal Sam Ayers asked us to look at the window. It was so dark I thought they must have changed the time from central daylight time to central standard time already," Castro said.

The group left the meeting room and went to look out of the front door of the school, where the wind was whipping hard against the door.

"I said, 'Is this a tornado?'" Castro said.

That drew some good-natured chuckling, he said.

"I stopped for probably 10 minutes looking out the window in awe of the dust storm," Castro said. "And I filmed it on my cell phone to send to my friends and family who live in other cities to show them what we went through here."

A call came in to Castro from Brian Yearwood, principal of Dunbar College Preparatory Academy, he said. The seventh- and eighth-grade girls were ready to play volleyball games, but there were no lights.

Castro got in his car to go to Dunbar. As he drove down MLK, he saw chain link fences plastered with paper that had blown against them and tumbleweeds and all sorts of debris blowing in the street.

"I was the only one who had left Estacado. Now I was starting to wonder whether I should have gotten in the car," he said.

He arrived safely at Dunbar and exchanged texts with his wife marveling about the dust storm.

"She said, 'Have you ever seen anything like this?'" Castro said.

The volleyball games never were played, and Castro headed for home eventually.

When he arrived, there was no power at his home. He pulled into the driveway but was unable to open the garage door,

"I could see my wife inside, wearing a hiker's light strapped around her head and moving around," he said.

To comment on this story:

joe.gulick@lubbockonline.com • 766-8758

leesha.faulkner@lubbockonline.com • 766-8706

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